The shit I have seen against nerd/gamer girls is something else. I have met tons of gamer girls, both physically attractive and not and they were no different in attitudes and skill then any of the men. I have seen some toxic as fuck gal gamers but have also seen some super chill gal gamers that were pretty good players. All of them have met assholes and creeps at some point.

I really despise that argument that toxicity was always part of gaming/the internet thus its okay. It's such a piss poor excuse to evade responsibility. I remember the days of X Box Live and Call of Duty lobbies, it was even worse than now in some ways and yet all you hear is nostalgia trippers romanticizing it like the racist and sexist jokes were A-Okay from the start because a bunch of edgy kiddos thought it was cool to do that.

It's also really dumb in the sense that gamers and nerds in the past, atleast if you look at media of the time were always looking to be accepted and have gals join in.

Of course once they joined in in large numbers all the enlightened losers threw tantrums.

@Wispy: A lot of (and I mean it) Indonesian nerds are conservatives and a lot of the more progressive ones are less actually progressive and more like less conservative. It's a natural result of living in a nation where crazy conservatism and religious fundamentalism are the status quo. Unfortunately, I don't have number and statistic to back it up. I only have personal experience here. But this is a nation where the nerds insult the USA for being a nation of frigid puritans because they censor fanservice stuff and thus, they see USA as the main obstacle for why is it so hard for them to play fanservice/erotic game in English. While at the same time, they also insult the USA for being a nation of decadent hedonists because people in the USA can have sex before they are married and all that free sex stuff. In other words, American women are sluts. Yeah... And before you ask, those comments come from the same persons. I said persons BTW, not person.

"It's also really dumb in the sense that gamers and nerds in the past, atleast if you look at media of the time were always looking to be accepted and have gals join in.

Of course once they joined in in large numbers all the enlightened losers threw tantrums."

I'm pretty sure that kind of thing happened only because they just thought those female gamers/nerds will treat them the same way that they thought/imagine those "cheerleaders" treat those "athletes". Of course, once they meet actual female gamers or nerds, those delusions are shattered. The entire thing is already stupid from the beginning, so yeah... It's both funny and depressing how fictional female gamers are treated much better than the real ones.

Edited by SteamKnight on Mar 11th 2019 at 10:22:49 PM

TobiasDrakeAlways watching, never seen
from Colorado, USA
Relationship Status: She's holding a very large knife

There's definitely a kind of paranoia about Fake Geek Girls TM being only into a thing for shipping or as a Mad Bride to one of the male characters to the exclusion of anything else about the work. As someone who is not a fan of shipping or canon romance as a whole, or the absolutely insane self-appointed Moral Guardians it tends to attract, I have definitely had that frustration when talking with other female fans in the past, especially when their interpretation of the work comes off as antithetical to its actual core. But the amount of women who are truly like that, and don't still enjoy the work for its own merits or treat shipping as a mere side hobby, tends to be blown way out of proportion as a cheap boogeyman.

...

Male shippers exist too, y'know.

Drake's Razor: Never attribute to cold, dispassionate logic that which can be equally or better explained by emotional outburst.

The logic is very simple — the competitive nature of online gaming exacerbates the sexism that is all too prevalent among gamers. As others have brought up, online gaming seems to enable Sore Winners — there's a reason teabagging is a thing. This also leads to Sore Losers. Mix that with sexism, and you get a very ugly situation.

Of course male shippers exist, and they can be just as obnoxious as your stereotypical Harmonian fanatic, but they don't get generalized as representative of the whole like what happens with female nerds.

DarthwynSword of Canterlot
from The void
Relationship Status: You cannot grasp the true form

It's the general plight of minorities. Any time a member of a minority misbehaves or does stupid shit, the entire minority gets judged. This also applies to works featuring minorities, such as the Wonder Woman, Black Panther, or the recent Captain Marvel movie.

Blame it on society conditioning people to think that it's shameful for boys to lose to girls in competitions. Especially when it comes to traditionally masculine stuff (or more modern masculine stuff like online shooter games or sports games).

It doesn't happen 100% of the time but it does happen a lot from my experiences. I have seen women just speak into the mic and immediately get a bunch of sexist and misogyny thrown at them. Even when the woman is actively trying to help her teammates I have seen this happen.

There has also always been dumbass stereotypes in gaming that has lended to this. The old, women play healers which are apparently easy (they are not) and men play the tanks and DPS and more skilled role. The truth is that I have seen men and women play all the roles in all kinds of games and I have seen plenty of men that playing DPS roles that absolutely sucked ass and we would of been better off without them on our teams. Those guys usually had egos the size of the Eiffel tower but would flip if you point out how shit they are. They also tend to immediately blame any women they are teamed with

Stuff like that makes me glad that I tend to avoid online multiplayer games. And even in situations where I do play online multiplayer games, I prefer the games that don't have a mic for toxic people to scream into.

DarthwynSword of Canterlot
from The void
Relationship Status: You cannot grasp the true form

You most commonly see those attitudes in FPS games or MM Os, the streaming community is also particularly bad. Overwatch is an particularly nasty example. I see women appear on the forums all the time complaining about how toxic it is and they always get a bunch of alt-righters and misogynists on their ass damn near immediately.

League of Legends' toxic community was one of the reasons that I quit playing. Or to be more accurate, one of the reasons I haven't come back. It's one of the most misogynistic gamerbro environments imaginable, and every facet of it from the average people playing it to the pro players just reinforce that. My anxiety and depression have just gotten worse over the years so going back to that environment (at least without friends) isn't very appealing.

Plus the toxic culture of Riot's workplace itself being exposed has soured me further. It wasn't terribly surprising to me anyway, since I think that kind of environment is unfortunately more common than it should be in gaming companies, but the fact that I found out that they made a big point of hiring players to the company just made it even more obvious that there would be problems. It's not a totally bad idea of course; people with a prior investment in the game and who know a lot about it are certainly an attractive prospect. However if you don't have any other criteria to filter out gatekeeping, toxic assholes and you hire them anyway, then of course the toxic culture of the playerbase would come to affect Riot as well. Like, seriously, "do you play Lo L 10 hours a day" is a really stupid thing to ask of an employee because most people who aren't pro players or streamers simply won't have that kind of time, and in and of itself being those things doesn't mean you have the qualifications to function in a game-making environment.

It was disappointing because for all their mistakes over the years and the many things they could be criticized for (such as their character roster not being very diverse with the female characters), I thought they were at least better than the shitty playerbase.

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.
...not really though.

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